For the first conference (Lyon, december 2018),
proposals shall be sent to the four convenors with a brief résumé, no later
than sept. 1st, 2018).

Argument

These past few decades,
French historiography has made important progress regarding the history of
legal education. A Société pour
l’histoire des facultés de droit was founded in 1983, allowing the
development and coordination of research in this specific field. Despite this
progress, the history of legal education has, for a long time, remained a mere
history of ideas and schools of thought, and has only considered law schools as
a mere structure enabling ideas to emerge and develop. More recently however,
French historiography has paid more attention to the law schools themselves, in
the perspective of a social history. Studies have been published about the
functioning of law schools, their staff, their students or their budget. Such
studies already existed in other fields of higher education (Charles, 2004 ;
Picard, 2007 ; Singaravelou, 2009 ; Ferté et Barrera, 2010), but legal
historians have only recently engaged in them. This historiographical turn is
sometimes linked with the current debates regarding global law and the
transformations of French legal education (Ancel et Heuschling, 2016 ; Jamin et
Van Caeneghem, 2016).

This renewal of research led legal historians
to investigate, for example, the birth of legal disciplines and the carriers of
law professors. A database of 600 law professors (1804-1950) called Siprojuris
has been launched on line a few years ago, under the supervision of Catherine
Fillon. This important collective work has opened new perspectives for the
social history of legal elites. It has also made intellectual portraits easier.
One must also mention the creation, in 2008, of a European network dedicated to
the history of legal education (Réseau
européen pour l’histoire de l’enseignement du droit).

Thus, the progress of the history of legal
education in the contemporary era has been substantial. This cycle of
conferences intends to build on this dynamism to address a phenomenon that has
not been investigated enough so far : the
history of legal education outside national borders in the 19th and 20th
centuries. Even if the 19th and 20th centuries are undeniably a time of
nationalisation of law and its teaching (compared, for instance, to the Middle
Ages or the Modern Times), they also are a time of spreading of the French
academic world (Audren et Halpérin, 2013).

-Firstly, in the context of military or colonial
expansion, mainland France tried to duplicate its legal education system within
new institutions (creation of law schools in countries that fell under the rule
of the Napoleonian Empire ; law schools in the colonies

[Alger
or Hanoï, for instance]
; law schools in eastern countries such as Egypt or Lebanon, etc.).

-Secondly, outside those authoritarian contexts,
many law professors, especially from the 1920s-1930s onward, travelled abroad
in order to promote French legal culture

(lectures, lessons in many
cultural institutes, etc.).

Therefore,
this transnational approach of legal education intends to address three issues
that have recently emerged : the raise of a transnational history of education
in other fields than law ; the historiographical turn towards global or
connected history ; the current reflection on global legal education. We are very much interested in inviting
foreign colleagues that could enlighten us about similar experiments in their
own countries, thus making comparion possible. This research programm will
be developed within 3 conferences :

This first
colloquium intends to understand better the structures of legal education
outside national borders. We know that in the colonies, the French state has
sometimes created law schools similar to those existing in metropolitan France.
Yet, in the most numerous cases, France had to be more inventive in territories
that did not abdicate their sovereignty, especially when other countries
intended to promote their own legal cultures in such places. This first meeting
will seek to sketch the multiple forms that legal education can take depending
on the context (lectures, creation of law schools, creation of cultural
institutes, control on local institutions already existing, etc.). With what
partners and with what money was France able to promote its legal education
system ?

This second
symposium will specifically address the question of the content and goals of
law courses outside national borders. What are the purposes of such teachings
depending on the local context ? (educating local elites ? making French
students familiar with local law ? promoting French legal culture in occupied
countries ? etc.). For example, do law professors teach French civil law the
same way in the colonies and in cultural institutes ? Do they adapt the
pedagogic content of their teachings according to the kind of students they
address ?

This last
colloquium will question the actors oflegal
education outside national borders, namely professors and students. As for law
professors, the main question will be about the reasons of their exile, be it
temporary or long-lasting. For what reasons does a law professor choose to go
abroad to teach ? For material reasons ? Intellectual reasons ? Ideological
ones ? What does this experience abroad teach us about those scholars ? Is it a
sign of their openmindedness ? Does is have an influence on their way of
teaching law ? Does it bear a political meaning ? As for law students,
prosopography studies would be very welcome. Students’ migrations can do a lot
for the circulation of knowledge. They can also put the states’ stability to
risk.